It is a constant goal of athletes and their coaches to improve performance. To that end, video recordings of sporting events are often reviewed in depth by the players and coaches to find areas for improvement. Typically, however, the overall time consumed and recorded for a particular event includes a large portion during which nothing of coaching-related interest is occurring. During much of the game time, the ball (or puck, etc.) is out-of-bounds, players are setting up for a next play, or the ball is otherwise out-of-play; the game is stopped for a time out or for logical break in play (e.g., half-time, between periods, etc.); the game is stopped for a commercial break, or the like; etc. As an example, a two-hour sporting event may only include 45 minutes during which the event is in play.
For review purposes, coaches and players generally only want to see portions of the video during which the event is in play. Conventionally, however, engaging with only the in-play footage has been undesirable. One common approach has been simply for the coach and/or players to manually scan through the entirety of the footage (e.g., by fast-forwarding and rewinding) to find portions of the event that are of interest. Such an approach can be time-consuming and frustrating. Another common approach has been for an individual, while watching the entirety of the video footage, to manually identify times in the footage when the game is in play, for example, by writing them down or by using a special video interface to create time indices. The coach and/or players can then use those indices to more efficiently scan through the footage. Still, such an approach is time-consuming and involves waiting for completion of the indexing. Yet another conventional approach has been to send the video to a third party, which can manually cut together only the relevant portions of the video and send back an edited game video for review by the coach and/or players. Such an approach tends to be preferable for coaches and players, but still typically involves waiting (often a full day or more) for the edited video.